1. Field of the Invention
Vibration isolation apparatus for 6.degree. of freedom.
2. Description of the prior art
The following U.S. patents were set forth in a preliminary search: Henderson 1,651,025; Wylie et al. 2,899,882; Bullard 3,464,657; Balke 3,635,427; Mard 3,690,607; Schubert et al. 3,701,499; and, Forys et al. 3,703,999.
Among the foregoing prior art patents, only the Bullard patent and the Schubert et al. patent disclose systems offering potential for vibration isolation with 6.degree. of freedom. In Bullard, however, the horizontal array of actuators would require a high degree of sophisticated control procedure to provide isolation with 6.degree. of freedom, due to an inherent tendency for linear motion of the protected platform to produce considerable angular motion of the actuators; and the system in Schubert et al., with vertical and horizontal arrays of actuators having ball-joint connections at their opposite ends, FIG. 11, utilizes a highly sophisticated type of connection in such ball-joint form.